Multi-criteria reasoning models for value aggregation in wind power permit application assessment

Assessment of an application for wind power establishment is a multi-criteria problem including the core problem: whether to grant permission or not. In Sweden, County Administrative Boards decide the outcomes of these kinds of applications. Five permit officers were interviewed to investigate the difficulties and the type of value aggregation in this work, and to test reasoning models as possible decision support tools. The commonly used type of aggregation was condition-based aggregation. Aggregation based on value differences, which means weighing together aspects for and against the wind power establishment, was considered difficult to apply by the respondents. Most of them agreed that some of the aspects that speak against granting permission could be aggregated but that aggregation of all aspects would be hard due to differences between aspects. In addition, the value of the main aspect that speaks for permission, climate friendly energy supply, is very difficult to estimate. Thus, aggregation based on value differences is a difficult question and how it could be performed is discussed in the paper. If policymakers wish to make it possible to take both positive and negative aspects into consideration and to discuss the trade-offs transparently, the investigated method can be a way forward. (c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).